DEPARTMENT OF DATA SCIENCE The Department of Data Science is Up and Running! by: James Geller
What do amoebae and university departments have in common? On the face of it, nothing. Amoebae are among the simplest monocellular life forms. University Departments are complex ecosystems of research and education, with professors at four ranks, students in BS, MS, or Ph.D. degree programs, lecturers, staff members, professors of practice, visiting scholars, offices, laboratories, etc. Yet, these two “life forms” have one thing in common: They “multiply” by cell division, they make two out of one. Up to the 19th-century Natural Philosophy spanned all investigations of nature, without distinctions between subject areas. Isaac Newton's book on the laws of motion and gravity was called "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" (1687) [1,2]. Work by Lord Kelvin and Peter Guthrie Tait, which helped define much of modern physics, was titled “Treatise on Natural Philosophy” (1867) [1]. With the subsequent increase in knowledge, physics was refined into several subfields, such as quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, electromagnetism, optics, cosmology, etc. [3]. Chemistry was divided into five major branches, starting with the distinction between organic and inorganic chemistry [7], and biology was refined into at least 25 subfields [4]. Many times when a field of study became too large and a natural split emerged, the university departments teaching this subject were also divided. Thus, major universities have distinct departments of nuclear physics, organic chemistry, molecular biology, etc. The impetus for the conceptualization of a new subfield of science is often the development of a distinct new set of research methods. Naturally, there is a delay between the conceptualization of a new field of scholarship and the creation of a new department for it. Administrators have to be convinced that a new department is necessary.
The Institute for Data Science E-News | page 04
